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Dessert

Petits Fours

Petits fours are small spiced cakes made with flour, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, eggs, candied citron, candied orange, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Petits Fours

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg with a spatula.

  2. Add the eggs and form a firm dough, working in a little flour on a table.

  3. Keep the dough in a bowl until the next day.

  4. You can add chopped candied citron and orange to the dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Take portions of the dough, roll them into logs, and flatten to ¼ inch thick.

  2. Cut into diamond shapes and brush with water.

  3. Place on lightly floured sheets and bake in a light oven (400°F / 200°C).

  4. Once baked, brush off excess flour from the bottoms before glazing.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Clove + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the flour and spices into a firm, workable dough.
Flour
Provides the structure of the dough and keeps it from sticking while shaping.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown lightly in the oven.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, egg, sugar):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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